The 2016 marching band season has come to end, and it has been an “E-motional” journey for its members. This season incorporated anger, happiness, sadness, and humor all into a 15-minute award-winning show called “E-Motions”.  

Under the leadership of band director Scott King, The Pride marching band won numerous awards including Grand Champions at the Haralson County Marching Competition. “I was expecting for us to create a show that connected to the audience,” King said. “I was also expecting the students to do their best and to perform at the highest level possible and they did not disappoint.”

The E-motions show featured four movements describing four different emotions. The first movement, anger, included a sharp marching style accompanied by the dark musical song “Dies Irae.” Following the anger performance the audience was presented with the upbeat humor movement. This arrangement allowed the audience to enjoy a laugh with its comical movements and circus-themed music. The humor section of the production seemed to receive the most praise from the audience with its staged mess-ups and comedic routine.  

The most popular part of the movement was the trombone feature.  “It was a nice little feature that displays the stereotype of a trombone and was great fun to play,” low brass section leader Ryan Bohdan said.

The show’s climax followed the humor movement. The climax featured sadness and used the popular 80’s song, “I Will Never Get over You, Getting over me“ by Expose. The calm and peaceful music mixed with the graceful color guard dancers on the field gave the audience a flashback to some of the ballads of the eighties. “The sadness movement had several dances, including solos and group dances, which were choreographed by [senior] Yuri-Grace Ohashi,” color guard member Laura Anderson said. “All of the movements flowed nicely with the music and created a solemn yet graceful image for the audience.”  

Happiness was the show’s final movement. The upbeat tone of Gloria Estefan’s song “Get on Your Feet” brought the show full-circle and ended  E-motions on a joyous note. The cheerful, upbeat music was accompanied by a dress change in which the color guard switched back from a somber black to a bright white. “I thought it was cool, especially the tuba feature and the tubas being up front,” tuba section leader Zach Garcia said. “The tempo change was also pretty cool in the way the music and drill was styled.”

The Pride performed its show at three competitions this year: the Northgate Valhalla Marching Competition, the Haralson County Marching Competition, and the Grovetown Marching Competition. As many as 30 schools competed for the coveted title of Grand Champion at each competition. All three competitions resulted in close scores determining  placement with merely decimals separating different bands. The Haralson County Marching Competition was the Mill’s most successful competition at which it won first place. The band finished second and third place in its other two competitions.

“Given that our band was so young, I felt we scored surprisingly well and the future is bright for the Panther Pride,” senior band captain Kyle Meyhoefer said.